


I Was Trying To Explain The Kingdom, But The Letters Kept Smudging As I Wrote Them

by orphan_account



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 21:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6025258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl has lost too much to hold onto anything else again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Was Trying To Explain The Kingdom, But The Letters Kept Smudging As I Wrote Them

**Author's Note:**

> This was initially meant to be longer but I like how it is now. Based on this excerpt from Snow and Dirty Rain by Richard Siken, my favorite poem of all time: 
> 
>  
> 
> _I was trying to describe the kingdom, but the letters_  
>  kept smudging as I wrote them: the hunter's heart,  
> the hunter's mouth, the trees and the trees and the  
> space between the trees, swimming in gold. The words  
> frozen. The creatures frozen. The plum sauce  
> leaking out of the bag. Explaining will get us nowhere.  
> I was away, I don't know where, lying on the floor,  
> pretending I was dead. 

There are many idiosyncrasies that come with homes Daryl had never known growing up. Of course his childhood house had its quirks, but they were all ugly—empty beer cans creating a moat around his old man's recliner, cigarette burns on the couch cushions, upturned ashtrays on the coffee table, plus the faded snapshots of motels and strip clubs he frequented with Merle. Images he'd rather forget, things he burned in moonshine and fire with Beth, all of it, including her, long gone and obsolete.

 

The farm had its small details, but Daryl spent so much time sequestering himself he never got to memorize them. He remembers picking at peeling paint on the porch, the sharp chips of white stuck under his nails. On the road, whether it was that first winter or after Terminus, whenever they camped in of one of the old-money plantation houses Maggie would stand and stare at the regulatory window shutters for minutes, dragging her fingertips over every rotted lath, the only one awake besides Daryl who smoked his cigarette if he had one or simply started packing, but never said anything. He respected Maggie's nostalgia, happy he never got too attached himself—making the farm just one less thing to mourn.

 

Sometimes Maggie would walk over to him once she was done and they'd stand together in silence. Other times she'd return inside. Once—after Terminus—she asked for a cigarette, but he only had one left, so they traded drags. “College,” she explained when he looked at her quizzically. He smirked, taking the cigarette from her hand. “College, huh?” he'd asked. She laughed and after that morning never asked for another smoke again.

 

Alternatively—he tries not to think about it or else his blood burns—the prison was the first time in his entire life he'd felt comfortably settled somewhere. He knew that place like the back of his hand, each potted plant and book and bloodstain, because he'd brought most of them all. He liked to get up early, right between dusk and dawn, and sit at the table in C block and feel the early morning dew sharp and cool against his skin. The sun would still be partially hidden and the gray walls made its light a kind of muted blue. Then a breeze would come in through the handful of broken windows, lifting up the curtains in front of the cells, creating waves of flowers or polka dots or nautical anchors on sheer cotton linen. Daryl could catch glimpses of his family blissfully asleep: Hershel's Bible on the end table and his soft snores, Beth's diary open on a new page against her leg, Maggie and Glen curled into each other, Carl with a comic book open atop his rising chest and Judith's crib next to him, Rick's arm flung over the edge of his bed with soil still ground into the lines of his palm, Carol and the hilt of her knife peeking out from underneath her pillow.

 

He wonders, now, sitting at a new kitchen table in Alexandria, if the rain has washed away the chalk drawings on the prison's walls or if they still stand there to this day, faded but permanently imprinted on the cement. He wonders if the plants broke through the ash and blood and gore to grow further, over the chain link fences and handbuilt awnings, through the broken windows and into C block. He hopes the curtains still lift in the breeze, testament to their brief respite.

 

What a joke.

 

Carol is making lemonade over the sink, the softness of her lilac cardigan juxtaposing the hardness in her frame Daryl will never forget. Water runs from a working faucet into a clean glass pitcher. Carol shuts it off and slices a lemon on a cutting board with a knife that never once dripped with blood. The knife thumps quietly against the wood board while birds chirp outside. Daryl stands, joints cracking. Carol looks over her shoulder.

 

“What's up?” she asks.

 

“Nothin',” he says, already walking to the door. He can feel Carol's stare and stops in the living room, turns back around. “You remember the butterflies on the walls?” he asks.

 

Carol turns to him completely, her paring knife beaded with lemon juice, brow furrowed. “Butterflies?” she asks, but then her face clears. “The prison,” she says.

 

“You think they're still there?” he asks.

 

Carol nods. “Sure.”

 

Daryl scoffs. “Right.” He pockets his hands and resumes walking.

 

Carol strides forward and catches his arm as he steps over the threshold of the front door. “Are you alright?” she asks, forcing him to look at her.

 

“Sure,” he mimics.

 

“Don't do this,” Carol says. “I don't want you out with Aaron if your head's not in the right place.”

 

He sighs, shoulders heaving, and leans against the doorjamb. Carol trails her hand down from his elbow to his wrist. He counts to five like the book says, sorting through his feelings.

 

“I don't trust them either,” Carol whispers, even though they're alone. “If it's the people you're worried about.”

 

“Ain't the people,” Daryl says. “We can take 'em down, if we need to.”

 

“Then what is it?” she asks, rubbing her thumb against his pulse.

 

Daryl squints at the street and sees two kids drawing with sidewalk chalk. “It's all gonna end,” he murmurs. “All of it, you know?” He sniffs, retracting his wrist from Carol's hold. “Sleeping at Rick's tonight,” he says.

 

“On the porch?” she asks.

 

“Yeah,” he confirms. “I'll be heading out first thing in the morning.”

 

She crosses her arms and smiles tightly. “Alright.”

 

Daryl ducks his head, brushes his lips against her cheek, and reels back, surprised by himself. “Get back to yer lemonade,” he says.

 

Carol blinks at him and he hurries down the steps. Rick is leaning against the porch railing next door, Judith on his hip. Carol lifts her hand. Rick nods. Daryl clambers up Rick's steps, wood creaking under his boots just because it's cheap clapboard, not that it's old and worn like the farm. Rick offers him Judith and he takes her to stop thinking so much, stares at her butter yellow hair.

 

“Stay inside tonight,” Rick says, his hand ghosting Daryl's hip.

 

Judith reaches up to tug at Daryl's shirt collar. “I'm fine,” he says.

 

“Well maybe I'm not,” Rick counters. Daryl meets his resolute gaze through his bangs.

 

“I'm always right here,” he promises.

 

Rick shakes his head. “No you ain't. Not now. Not since—”

 

“Beth?” Daryl offers harshly.

 

“The only one who blames you for that is you,” Rick reminds.

 

Daryl chews the inside of his cheek. Judith starts fussing in his arms.

 

“She misses you,” Rick softly informs.

 

“She has her daddy and big brother,” Daryl says, rubbing circles into her back. She quiets quickly.

 

“That what you think?” Rick asks.

 

Daryl hands her back and takes a pack of smokes out of his pocket. “I'm going out on another run in the morning.” He lights a cigarette and holds it behind his leg, away from Judith.

 

Rick nods. “Alright.”

 

“Don't do this, man,” Daryl says.

 

Rick takes a step back. “I'm only working with what you're giving me,” he says and returns inside.

 

Daryl sits on the railing and leans his head back against the post, raising the cigarette to his lips. Carol watches him from the kitchen window across the lawn, pitcher of finished lemonade in her hands, framed by lace ivory drapes. Daryl looks down and picks at the paint on the railing.

 


End file.
